Kevin Frisch: Coffee, tea or prevarication?

Monday

Apr 26, 2010 at 12:01 AMApr 26, 2010 at 5:42 AM

It should come as no surprise that the Tea Party movement has generated — along with considerable discussion and debate — a counter-movement of sorts, the Coffee Party. Now, along with coloring states red and blue, television graphics departments can use little teapots and coffee urns to designate conservative and liberal strongholds.

Kevin Frisch

COFFEE PARTY MISSION STATEMENT: The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will ...
— www.coffeepartyusa.com

It should come as no surprise that the Tea Party movement has generated — along with considerable discussion and debate — a counter-movement of sorts, the Coffee Party. Now, along with coloring states red and blue, television graphics departments can use little teapots and coffee urns to designate conservative and liberal strongholds.

What’s that? The Tea Party movement isn’t necessarily conservative? And the Coffee Party wasn’t formed as a reaction to that movement? Anyone who believes that has been drinking something stronger than tea or coffee.

The Tea Party movement — the movement, not every last individual in it — is very much right of center. Polls have confirmed the political leanings of its members and their own rallies provide anecdotal evidence. I’ve seen posters depicting President Obama as Hitler. I’ve yet to see one depicting House Minority Leader John Boehner as Goebbels.

Their demonstrations, by the way, have offered a fascinating example of how the conservative media expertly forces its agenda on the mainstream media. Conservative outlets — with the usual big mouths chanting the loudest and the scores of wannabes across the country falling in line — will tout an event as if it were a presidential inauguration. Straight news outlets decline to pick up the “story.” And since the demonstration is likely to be a few thousand predictable sorts saying predictable things, who can blame them? The conservative media, that’s who, which then points to the mainstream media’s failure to breathlessly report a made-for-right-wing-TV event as if it were actual news as proof of their liberal bias! It’s quite brilliant.

But don’t try to sell the idea that Tea Party events are nothing more than a bunch of like-minded, opened-minded citizens who just happen to agree that the problems we face as a a nation are the making of only one of the two major parties. As Michael Corleone told his lying, soon-to-be-late brother-in-law in “The Godfather,” “it insults my intelligence and makes me very angry.”

And that goes for the Coffee Klatch. Are we really to believe this movement would have sprung up organically were it not for the Tea Parties? I’m all for working with the government, as opposed to against it, and reaching across the aisle, and civility in political discourse. But it’s clear these goals are presented by the Coffee groups as an alternative to the less-inclusive atmosphere emanating from the Tea Parties.

Also working against the Coffee Party: mMe-too imitations of a successful original almost never succeed. The Rolling Stones’ “Their Satanic Majesties Request” (even with its 3-D album cover) was a pale also-ran to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper.” The huge political success of the Republican’s 1994 “Contract with America” brought us President Clinton’s 1996 “New Covenant” and John Kerry’s 2004 “Contract with America’s Middle Class,” neither of which are remembered. And if it weren’t for “The Bachelor,” which is bad enough, society would never have been exposed to “Rock of Love with Bret Michaels.” Likewise, Coffee Partiers will never attain Tea Party-level prominence.

So whether you’re hoisting a teacup or a coffee mug, let’s at least not pretend you’re a politically disinterested sipper. And yes, you can tell where I stand politically by my drink of choice: Holding out hope for bipartisanship, I favor bicarbonate of soda.